Identity theft can be avoided with a simple tool

Identity theft is one of the fastest growing areas of financial crimes in the U.S.. The way to prevent becoming a victim of identity theft is to guard your financial information carefully, and to destroy that information that you no longer have a need for. As technology becomes more a part of our everyday life, dishonest people are coming up with ever more smart ways to exploit the financial or personal information of others for their personal benefit - and their victims' loss. The surveys vary, but some predictions say that about ten million Individuals are robbed by identity theft each year.

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Below are a number of tips that will help you guard your financial information when using the Web and will protect you from becoming a victim of a financial scam.

As identity theft becomes a growing problem, millions of Americans are at risk. One simple device, available at any office supply, can go a long way towards helping you avoid being a victim of this crime.

One of the preferable, and most affordable, ways to prevent theft of your information is to purchase a document shredder. In recent years, a lot of individuals have been buying shredders for home use. A paper shredder used to be a gadget that one only saw at large businesses, such as credit unions. Document shredders can presently be seen at just about any office supply store and you can also find them inexpensively at your neighborhood Wal-Mart store.
 

Documents that should be destroyed could include recurring bills, charge card statements, old tax returns, business receipts or just about any other item that you might discard that contains information that pertains to you. Wading through someone's garbage may appear to be a great deal of effort, but identity thieves do it every day. By buying a paper shredder, you can more or less destroy any such documents before throwing them away, as papers that have been destroyed can no longer be read. The purpose of a shredder is to stop potential criminals from looking for and finding your personal financial information on any documents that you may throw away.

Cheap models will do sufficiently well, but for a bit extra money you can buy a "confetti" type paper shredder, which cuts the papers to substantially smaller strips. Paper shredders are not particularly costly; you can buy small models for only $30 or so. Inexpensive shredder models are known as "straight cut" shredders; it is possible that anyone with the shredded pieces could assemble the strips of paper back together again.

You never know when the IRS may determine, without warning, to audit a tax return you submitted three or four years ago. It is often a smart idea to keep a few financial or personal documents for as long as 7 years for income tax reasons. You ought to only destroy financial paperwork when you are sure that you will no longer need them. You shouldn't toss out all important paperwork. You ought to retain business receipts, wage statements, W-2 forms and any other similar documentation until such time that you can be reasonably sure that you will not need them anymore.

You should guard your information when shopping online and watch out for fraud and scams from telemarketers and e-mailers engaged in phishing attacks. Shredding papers is just one part of the prevention process for identity theft. The dishonest people who would steal your financial information are going to use a varied attack, so you ought to use a varied defense.